William Dean

While the book has some interesting history about Roman rule in Palestine after the time of Jesus, I continued to wonder where he was getting his refutation of scripture in the New Testament primarily. His take on the bitter dispute between Paul and the disciples seems flawed, and he discounts any eyewitness testimonials of the apostles after the resurrection. He claims NT writings as conjecture or concocted to make the gospel message more believable. As if the martyrdom of nearly all the apostles isn't proof that they never recanted their stories of the resurrection and their time with Jesus. His mention that Jesus and his followers were illiterate peasants is suspect since Jesus was known to have quoted Old Testament scripture and likely knew Hebrew.